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I ignored academics to the point where I almost didn’t graduate from college — and it helped me land my dream job as a result.

My academic awakening — or lack thereof — began three years earlier, as I sat inside a small classroom on our college campus. An editor from the Minneapolis Star Tribune was there to speak to our journalism class on what it took to become a newspaper reporter or editor.

She talked about the importance of understanding the craft, of what it took to be a great reporter, and what a big-city newspaper would be looking for in the young, up-and-coming journalists that we aspired to be.

During the ensuing question-and-answer period, one student asked, “So, how important is your GPA?” The editor laughed.

“Put it this way,” she told us. “Nobody ever asked me in a job interview why I got a ‘D’ in French class. Here’s what they care about: Can you write? Can you report? Can you work on deadline? Do you have clips? Have you worked in a newsroom? Do you have references? Those are the things that matter.”

After that class, my entire view of college changed. Instead of sweating tests and textbooks, I went out and worked . I wrote for the student newspaper, got an internship at a local magazine, started writing as a freelancer for small, regional newspapers, and begged my college professors to connect me with active journalists who were looking for interns or freelance writers.

Prior to sitting in that class, I’d made the Dean’s List for academic performance. After my “awakening,” I never made the Dean’s List again. In fact, my GPA slid so far downhill that I almost didn’t graduate.

My mom was not happy.

But all those hours I’d spent working in the realworld paid off. My internships, my clips, and my newsroom references ended up landing me a job straight out of college at The Arizona Republic, one of the biggest newspapers in the United States.

Unless you’ve worked in journalism, you have no idea how rare it is for a 21-year-old college graduate to get hired on at a huge newspaper like that. And the only reason it happened was that I came to this realization early on: College is a sham.

In business, academic achievements are meaningless

Twenty years later, I stood in front of a class of MBA students at a college here in the Twin Cities, teaching them about social media and business.

“You want to land your dream job?” I asked them. “I can promise you, it’s not going to mean jack squat to an employer that you earned an MBA. You know why? Anybody can sit here, read textbooks and case studies, memorize lessons and recite them to a professor or answer them on a written test. Here’s what most employers care about: Can you do the job? Do you have real-world experience? Do you have the type of passion, talent and intuition that can’t be taught?”

I’m the son of two college professors. I’ve been a lifelong learner, and to this day I still devour books, e-courses and anything else I can use to make myself smarter when it comes to running my business or helping my clients. But, aside from the internships and a few outstanding professors, I think college was a complete waste of money.

Harvard vs. Hard Knocks

One of my favorite all-time movie scenes is from Good Will Hunting, where Matt Damon’s character – a self-taught genius with no formal education — takes on a fancy-pants Harvard student who is trying to embarrass Damon’s non-educated friends at a bar.

“You dropped $150,000 on a education that you could’ve gotten for $1.50 in late fees at the public library,” Matt Damon’s character says.

The small college I went to — the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn. — now costs around $45,000 a year, and the idea of dropping $180,000 or more to get a four-year degree is insane to me, especially given the times we live in.

We exist in a world where I can literally ask my phone who the ninth president of the United States was and get the answer in three seconds. We walk around with a virtual library in our pockets, where every recorded aspect of human history is now at our fingertips.

As long as I can read and write and don’t plan on becoming a doctor, chemical engineer or scientist, what do I need college for?

Imagine what $45,000 a year could do in terms of hiring a professional journalist to give me one-on-one training or mentoring? Imagine the e-courses, books and video trainings I could buy and consume on my own time to learn my craft? Imagine the ability I’d have to start publishing my own articles online and sharing them with my target audiences through blogs and social media channels?

None of them finished college, and yet all of them are among the most successful businesspeople on this planet.

John Nemo is a bestselling author, speaker and online course creator. Register for his free webinar on generating more business with LinkedIn and his free training on how to create, run and make money with webinars.